Prabowo Highlights Bureaucratic Tricks Complicating Government Programmes

JAKARTA - President Prabowo Subianto has highlighted parties that still manipulate the bureaucracy even when regulations for implementing a programme have been simplified by the central government.

“We have reduced and improved the laws; we improve them using presidential regulations, but they resort to tricks, creating technical regulations again, more tricks, oh dear,” said Prabowo during a discussion with journalists and experts in Hambalang, Bogor, West Java, as quoted from a replay on Kompas TV’s YouTube channel on Friday (20/3/2026).

In that discussion, Prabowo exemplified the complexity of bureaucracy in the fertiliser subsidy programme, which he had previously resolved.

“The fertiliser issue, I found there were 145 regulations,” said Prabowo.

“So from the state-owned factory to the farmer, there are, if I’m not mistaken, how many signatures? First, 14 ministries must sign, then the governor signs, then the regent signs,” Prabowo stated.

Due to the convoluted bureaucracy, subsidised fertiliser does not reach farmers’ hands. In fact, some is smuggled.

Prabowo then carried out deregulation and simplified the rules to disburse the fertiliser subsidy.

He emphasised that deregulation is important to carry out.

However, parts of the bureaucracy still like to manipulate the regulations.